Donald Craig Mitchell is an attorney and nationally recognized expert on federal Indian law who practices law in Alaska and Washington, D.C. He is the author of a two-volume history of the Alaska Native land claims movement: Sold American: The Story of Alaska Natives and Their Land, 1867-1959, which former Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall has described as “the most important and comprehensive book about Alaska yet written and a major intellectual triumph,” and Take My Land Take My Life: The Story of Congress's Historic Settlement of Alaska Native Land Claims, 1960-1971. In 2006 the Alaska Historical Society named Sold American and Take My Land Take My Life two of the most important books that have ever been written about Alaska.

Entries by Donald Craig Mitchell

Last Sunday on 60 Minutes correspondent Steve Kroft asked Barack Obama this question: "Many times in our history there have been big ideas like going to the moon and the Marshall Plan ... What would you like to see happen in your [next] four years?" The president responded with a...

Last week when he appeared on MSNBC to promote his new book, Bill Clinton suggested that former presidents who have served two terms should be able to seek a nonconsecutive third term. Only two former presidents have tried to do so. Ulysses S. Grant sought, and almost won,...

On Wednesday, January 5, Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski made history when she was sworn into the 112th Congress and became the first incumbent Senator in United States history to have been reelected as a write-in candidate.

In the November 2 general election Lisa beat Tea Party candidate Joe Miller,...

Four days before the August 24th primary election in which she was a candidate for the Alaska Republican Party's nomination for the seat in the United States Senate she had occupied since 2002 when her father gave it to her, Lisa Murkowski publicly promised that she would abide by the...

As every aging mousekeeter knows, on the Mickey Mouse Club one day a week was Anything Can Happen Day. Insofar as the contest between Joe Miller, Lisa Murkowski, and Scott McAdams for election to the United States Senate is concerned, this Tuesday is Anything Can Happen Day in Alaska. Because...

The Alaska Senate election is only three weeks away. But a multitudinous number of Alaska Democrats, including me, whose votes may decide the outcome remain flummoxed, befuddled, uncertain. Should they remain allegiant to their party and vote for Scott McAdams, the Democratic candidate? Or should they abandon McAdams and write...

On August 24 Joe Miller, a no-one-had-ever-heard-of-him-before attorney from out the road in Fairbanks, beat Lisa Murkowski, Alaska's senior United States Senator, by 2006 votes in the Alaska primary election to win their party's nomination as its candidate in November for election to the seat Lisa now occupies in the...

When the polls closed on the August 24 Alaska Republican primary election an unknown forty-three-year-old, flag-waving, baby-killer-hating, right-of-fiscally-conservative attorney from Fairbanks, Alaska, named Joe Miller dumbfounded the pundits and rocked the national political culture. Because if after absentee ballots are counted he holds onto his 1,668-vote lead, Joe Miller will...

For those of us who had a ringside seat in Alaska from which to watch it happen, Sarah Palin's take-no-prisoners rise from small town mayor to tabloid celebrity who moves through the hard-right circles in which she now travels like the rock star she has become has been wonderful fun....

The United States of America is in very serious trouble. Not just because 14.8 million citizens who want a job are unemployed, the nation is $12.4 trillion in debt, and is mired in a war in Iraq it should never have fought and a war in Afghanistan that the President...

Maybe, as the McCain-Palin campaign hopes, Saturday's press conference was the end of "Troopergate" -- because a national press corps too incurious to care whether Palin has any idea who Bill Ayers is will also likely give her a pass on Troopergate. And maybe the Alaska Senate dominated by Republicans...

For Alaskans who have been enjoying the blood sport that Sarah Palin's weaving and bobbing to avoid accountability in the Troopergate investigation has generated, last week there were two noteworthy new developments.

The first new development was the decision by the McCain presidential campaign to fly New York City attorney...

It has been forty-eight hours since I have had a call from any agent of any national news organization. So the fun that those of us on the outer ring of the commotion have been having since the announcement of the Palin ascendancy may be about over.